


Twenty Diversions: Isumi Shinichirou thinks about the Hand of God

by orphan_account



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen, One of My Favorites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-30
Updated: 2005-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-13 02:25:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief meditation on igo, seen through Isumi's eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Diversions: Isumi Shinichirou thinks about the Hand of God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aiwritingfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiwritingfic/gifts).



1) The Hand of God does not exist.

2) The Hand of God will not be found in a computer.

Isumi is brushing his teeth one summer night when Yang Hai calls from a phone line buzzing with static and digital echoes. Isumi can barely tell Mandarin-accented Japanese from the warping of sound waves, for which Yang Hai apologises. He explains that he’s using a new software program to make the call, which involves going through a company in New Delhi that makes you stare at pop-under advertisements for lotteries in Denmark in exchange for free direct dialling anywhere in the world, no strings attached.

 _Soo desu ka_ , Isumi says, and ignores the jargon he didn’t recognize. Yang Hai understands these algorithms. Broadband plus European lotteries equals free phone calls to Japan. One million permutations times _x_ number of Go-cognizant computer programmers equals the Hand of God.

Intuition is simply compressed logic, says the Chinaman. Give technology enough time and data and anything is possible.

Isumi knows that Yang Hai is courteous and intelligent and a more experienced Go player than he is. He also knows the feeling of Go stones - black, white, cold and living between his fingers – and the glow of a computer screen: warm, bright and dead.

Can a computer answer an opening _komoku_ with _tengen_? Of course, Yang Hai says, given the right parameters.

They are both adults, and they will agree to disagree.

  
3) Because the Hand of God does not exist, it will not be found by Touya Akira and Shindou Hikaru.

4) He finds himself compelled to revise his first statement. It is not that the Hand of God does not (currently) exist; it is that it will _never_ exist, whether now or in a thousand years when ten thousand Go programs and millions more players haunt computers all over the galaxy, playing _joseki_ Touya Kouyou never dreamed of.

Isumi thinks this one afternoon while staring at the meteor-spangled screensaver on Waya’s laptop, mostly because Waya is surprisingly academic for a high school dropout, and doesn’t mince his definitions - not when it comes to _igo_ , at least.

To be specific Isumi would say that the Hand of God has never been achieved, will never be achieved and in other words, is part of a mythology created to give Go players hopes and dreams as well as a feeling of significance – a mythology whose manifestation is about as likely as the resurrection of the dead.

Isumi thinks this but doesn’t say it because Waya is not the sort of person who outgrows believing in fairy tales.

5) Actually, _igo_ players are mostly not the sort of people who outgrow believing in fairy tales, and perhaps this is why Isumi has noticed that Go players like to talk about the Hand of God: who comes closest, how close they’ll get in their lifetime, and what sort of game would be required to achieve it. Occasionally they even talk about whether they believe in it.

How do you play if you do not believe? says a wizened old pro in a salon one autumn evening.

Isumi smiles and scratches his head. I think we all believe, he replies, but he doesn’t specify in what.

6) If the Hand of God appeared one final day Isumi would like it to go to Waya who listens to Morishita-sensei and couldn’t wait for Isumi to turn pro; Waya, who loses to Fuku and helped Shindou get stronger amidst the smoke of Go salons. Isumi would like to believe in that Hand of God. Not Touya Kouyou’s Hand of God.

7) In fact, a Hand of God which belongs not only to Waya, but to Ochi and Nase and even Mashiba, to Ashiwara and Saeki and Yang Hai and maybe Isumi himself – perhaps a Hand of God which lies scattered across a hundred thousand _gobans_ in communal ownership, a composite of every brilliant hand and elegant shape that exists/has existed/will exist – _that_ Hand of God, he might be able to believe in.

8) Scientifically he would have to say that should the Hand of God arrive in their lifetime, Ko Yonha and Le Ping are closer to it than any number of the above-mentioned combined.

9) He still likes the communal theory better.

10) Isumi does not believe in the Hand of God because he does not believe in a God, and even if he did he would not believe in a God of Go.

11) He thinks this atheism is idealistic but not entirely practical, as Shindou Hikaru seems to believe in a God of Go, or at least a God of some sort, and within three years Shindou will defeat him three games out of three.

12) Shindou and Touya Akira will never find the Hand of God, but they will die trying.

13) On a hypothetical note Isumi would have to say that Touya Akira is closer to the Hand of God than Shindou is, because Touya’s Go is precise and deadly, graceful like a knife-sharp wire wielded by skilful hands.

14) Courtesy of Kuwabara Honinbou and several inquisitive reporters among others, it is now accepted fact that Touya and Shindou are rivals (Waya twigged to this a long time ago, in one of his unpredictable but typical displays of insight), but generally no question of who is the _better_ player.

That Kuwabara-san, Kurata and at least a dozen other Go professionals seem to like Shindou’s Go better does not surprise Isumi because most of the time, he agrees with them.

15) This is a source of puzzlement to him until one morning as he is recreating a game by Honinbo Jowa. Touya Akira, he realizes, will produce the Hand of God, but it is Shindou’s Go, his unfolding patterns and fractal-like shapes of hope, that will make it possible.

16) This is of course supposing that the Hand of God were not impossible, which it is, but something about Shindou Hikaru makes people want to believe in these things.

17) “Do you think Sai could reach the Hand of God?” asks a female _insei_ during the Young Lions’ tournament.

Isumi looks at Shindou. There used to be a time when you could look at Shindou during conversations like this and expect to see some sort of stifled reaction; these days there is rarely anything other than a flicker of green marble eyes. It is Waya who speaks: “I don’t think he will.”

“It doesn’t matter whether he did – whether he will,” - and there are all the junior high students, children staring; Shindou and Touya are the darlings of the _inseis_ for more reasons than one. “I think we all need to aim for the Hand of God ourselves. For the players who came before us, and the players who will come after.”

18) “Do you believe what Shindou says?” Isumi asks Ochi afterwards.

Ochi pauses at the bathroom door and frowns through silver-rimmed glasses. “I believe in the Go I play,” he says curtly, and leaves the room.

19) He grasps the stone between a callused finger and a well-worn nail and slides it on the _goban_ , sure and familiar. The shape takes form and twists in his mind’s eye.

20) This hand is enough, provided there is another.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Narration: Twenty Diversions](https://archiveofourown.org/works/325508) by [aiwritingfic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aiwritingfic/pseuds/aiwritingfic)




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